I took the wife out today for her birthday. Now, I don’t go out in public that much. I see the folks in the Church I serve. I see my children and grandchildren. I talk on the phone with people who share a like faith/worldview but I don’t rub shoulders with the hoi poloi very often.
After tonight I know why I don’t go out very often. Tonight, while shopping at a small knick-knack establishment the wife wanted to stop at, I saw a clerk who was tatted all up. Now, I know this is pretty common, but it was not the fact of the tatts that had me gawking in amazement. No, rather it was the type of tatts. If you remember the kind of macabre stuff that Film Director Tim Burton used to deliver up (see his film “Night After Christmas”) this woman was tatted all over with Tim Burton kind of cartoon characters. As I watched her move from task to task it was akin to watching a live version of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” only with Tim Burton type characters.
Then there was another tatted white woman who was decidedly blond but who had a Rastafarian style hairdo wherein the Rasta locks looked like they were each a different color randomly drawn from a Crayola crayon mega box. Her blond locks bounced around with her Crayola Crayon Rasta locks and it reminded me of those old multi-flavored life-saver candy wrappers. Now, what really made it surreal is that she was holding the hand of a 3 or 4 year old and was speaking to the child in a nurturing and loving tone, like any mother might. I thought, “This must be what it is like to be the child of a mother who is a cross between Medusa and Willy Wonka.”
At another store I couldn’t help but hear the conversation of two rather tall chaps who looked all the world to be from the Dinka tribe and likely playing Basketball for Michigan State. We were in Lansing after all. Their conversation was loud and almost undecipherable. Yet, every so often I’d hear, “Gonna get me a flannel shirt. Never had a flannel shirt.” Only it came out more as monosyllabic grunts that I’m sure in the Dinka language was really quite flowery and expressive. As to the second tall Dinka, well the only thing I could make out from his language was “LEVIS.” It became apparent that he had never owned a pair of Levis before and he was delighted with finding a pair that might fit his extraordinary inseam. They made me nervous because wherever I went in the small store, the Dinka Brothers seemed to be following me with their strange and barely decipherable yet energetic linguistic outbursts. I guess all those cases of Iryna Zarutska and Austin Metcalf are starting to give me the jitters.
Then we dropped into a bookstore. You’d think one would find maybe a Christmas display or something down that line but the first thing I bump into upon entering the store is a display in praise of Hannukah heaping praise on sundry Jewish authors during this Hannukah season. The good news though is that I did not see any Kwanza displays. They were probably in another part of the bookstore.
As we walked the Mall I couldn’t help but notice how many of the “street vendors” in the Mall had a great deal in common with Vivek Ramaswamy, Usha Bala Chilukuri Vance, Piyush “Bobby” Jindal and Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley. I guess those people are just really good entrepreneurs, thus explaining why they would be so well represented in those little side shops.
I was also in a Macy’s store where I saw a very well dressed male clerk going about his business stocking shelves. He was wearing a tie and a suit. I thought … “Now this chap sticks out more than anybody I’ve seen so far because he is so 1960s with his well-trimmed mustache, his nattily pressed suit, and his conscientious arranging of the stock for which he was responsible.” Yep… he was the weirdest sight of them all. The guy who was the most “normal” existing and going about his business in the midst of a circus show specializing in the “odd and never seen before,” was the circuses biggest attraction.
We decided to eat at a Chinese Restaurant where, I am confident in saying, that all the help spoke perfect Chinese. I don’t know if they could speak English since I didn’t hear any until it came time to pay my bill. Only then did I discover that some “Engrish” was in their grasp.
Now, Lansing, Michigan is a university city (Home of Michigan State) and so I shouldn’t be surprised with the multicultural feel. However, as I reflected that night on previous celebrations of my wife’s Birthday over the decades, I couldn’t help but hear the echoes of Dorothy ringing in my ears … “Toto, darling, we are not in Kansas anymore.”